Tuesday, April 22, 2014

The first woman to run in the Boston Marathon (1967)

In 1967 Kathrine Switzer entered the Boston Marathon, officially a male-only event, by signing her application form as K.V. Switzer. As she was running, one of the directors of the marathon, Jock Semple, attacked her, started screaming at her, and tried to throw her out of the race. (He's the guy behind her in the photograph above.) Her football-player boyfriend, who was running with her, body-blocked Semple and knocked him off the road. Switzer finished the race.

It's worth reflecting that 1967 wasn't really that long ago. And this happened in the United States, not in Saudi Arabia. Some useful historical perspective ...

=> For a video clip that includes a retrospective interview with Kathrine Switzer and some moments from the 1967 marathon, see below.

About Me

Jeff Weintraub is a social & political theorist, political sociologist, and democratic socialist who has been teaching most recently at the University of Pennsylvania, Bryn Mawr College, and the New School for Social Research, He was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University in 2015-2016 and a Research Associate at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, Bryn Mawr College.
(Also an Affiliated Professor with the University of Haifa in Israel & an opponent of academic blacklists.)